


everything he ruined, everything he'll remedy

by calicomoon



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Ben Solo Needs A Hug, Bendemption, F/M, Fix-It, I just needed to mourn my child OKAY?!, TRoS Spoilers, despite one of my stories literally being titled "better than he deserves" lmao i did this to myself, let him repent lucasfilm I DARE YOU, more Ben Solo character study than proper Reylo but, my beloved son deserved so much BETTER
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-16
Updated: 2020-01-16
Packaged: 2021-02-19 08:21:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,325
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22274608
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/calicomoon/pseuds/calicomoon
Summary: When the light returns to Rey’s eyes, Ben Solo remains.*in which Ben Solo lives and repents, day by day, as he was always meant to.
Relationships: Kylo Ren/Rey, Rey/Ben Solo, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 16
Kudos: 195





	everything he ruined, everything he'll remedy

**Author's Note:**

> which would you have (for you can only have one),  
> the Disney focus group asks,  
> a kiss of death,  
> or a chance at life?
> 
> I grumble,  
> and I groan,  
> and then I write this thing.

When the light returns to Rey’s eyes, Ben Solo remains.

  
He expected it to take everything from him. It’s what he wanted. Yet something in the Force keeps him tethered to this reality – something that loves him, something whose pride aches in his chest, something that whispers in his ear that there is still so much to be done – and so instead of letting the Force claim him, Ben stays firmly, painfully, on ancient ground.

  
“Ben,” Rey breathes, awestruck. She barely dares to touch him in her disbelief, as if he’ll disappear any moment. Her hands tremble as it hovers over his cheek, brushing aside a lock of his dark, sweat-drenched hair with a tenderness that Ben won’t let himself think he’s finally earned. As a smile breaks over her face, Rey leans in, hungry and so alive—

  
—and he pulls back.

  
She pauses. “Ben?”

  
For the second time in as many minutes, Ben is utterly terrified. I came here to die, he thinks. I came here to die for you. “I shouldn’t be here.”

  
Rey strokes his cheek, searches his eyes. Desperate to understand. “What do you mean?”

He can’t articulate the hollow terror threading itself into the very fabric of his being. It’s not supposed to be like this. Something has gone wrong. Ben had given everything to the dark, then to Rey…and he loves her so dearly, but he is so empty and so afraid.

It had been easy to return when he thought it was once and for all. Nothing has ever come so easily to him as coming back to her; he knows now that he’s spent his whole life tied on the end of her string, and the hardest things he’d faced had come, in large part, from resisting the pull of her. His whole life’s purpose, he was sure in the end, was to give her everything he has.

But now, there are tomorrows. Now there are deeds for which he needs to answer. He is too flawed, too broken…

“I have nothing left to give,” he finally moans back.

Rey’s expression is quizzical; her hazel eyes dart between his as she runs her shaking fingers through his hair. Ben is too weak to form the words she needs him to say, but after a moment, her face softens, a flicker of recognition passing between them.

With her gentlest smile, Rey takes his hands in hers and brings them to her lips. She kisses his bloodied knuckles - a prayer and a blessing in one. “You have everything you need,” Rey whispers.

*

They desperately want to leave together, but in the end, they leave Exegol alone.

“Come back for me,” she whispers into his shoulder.

“In time,” he replies, his lips in her hair.

It takes them what feels like lifetimes to separate, and it still isn’t enough. His arms ache for her when she goes; not for the first time, he curses himself for depriving them both of happiness for so long. Rey hops into the X-wing as if it were always hers, perfectly at home, stopping for one last look just before the cockpit closes and she takes off into the night.

He’ll remember her tearful gaze for as long as the Force lets him live.

And once she’s gone...

The moment she is gone, Ben is lost. Where can he begin to atone for a galaxy’s worth of sin?

_Anywhere is better than here, kid_ , his uncle advises, and for once, Ben has no argument.

He climbs into the TIE fighter he’d cobbled back together on Endor’s ocean moon – shoddily, in a panic, it would have been nice if the deserters had left even one of the ships they stole intact. Thankfully, piloting junkers is in his blood.

_Search your feelings. They’ll steer you right if you listen._

So Ben closes his eyes, breathes, listens. The things he hears – the deafening screams of padawans, the howl of a blazing fire – they take lives of their own as they have every night for years, dig their talons into his chest and twist his insides. He sees the place, he knows the way by heart, from anywhere, and yet—

“I’m not ready,” Ben pants, determinedly blinking away his tears.

_The next best thing, then_ , says Luke.

Ben searches again. What he finds is no less damning, but the pain is smaller. Manageable.

He sets his course.

*

There’s little room for logic when one’s feelings are leading them across a galaxy, but it really cannot be overstated how little Ben planned this.

His landing in the Jakku desert isn’t his most elegant but it’s a sight better than his last rough landing on Pasaana (if one’s sight wasn’t all that good to begin with). The TIE had barely survived the trip to Exegol, and the fact that’s it’s made it all the way to Jakku without disintegrating in the middle of the abyss is, quite frankly, ludicrous. Ben has never been one to worry much about odds; he is dense and reckless, like his father before him. Nevertheless, he’s certain they were not on his side. He abandons the now-useless TIE and, with only the softest call of the Force to guide him, sets himself to walking.

Ben walks for what is likely just a few hours but feels like several days. He’s grateful that he’d shed so much clothing before Exegol, but the lone tunic he wears quickly becomes soaked with his sweat as the oppressive Jakku sun beats down on him, and he’s got no hope of avoiding sunburn if he takes it off. His prayers to stumble upon water go unanswered…not that he thinks he could keep it down if he did find any, with the way his stomach is beginning to churn.

Just when he thinks he’s going to collapse, he sees the outline of what he thinks may be a hut, then two, and summons the strength to take the final paces he needs to reach them.

The ruins of Tuanul are barely recognizable, dusted over with a year’s worth of sand and utterly abandoned since the massacre of its residents at Kylo Ren’s hands.

As the sunset paints the weathered stones a rich orange, Ben presses his forehead and hand against them, tentatively opening himself to the painful memories they hold.

With a whimper, Ben pulls back as though he’s been burned, gasping for breath. One of his most terrible choices, for which there is no one else to blame, remembered here forever in the Force.

He could tear it all down with a wave of his hand. Bury it, run, and forget this place.

But Ben is through with running.

Night finally falls over the village; without a drop of water in the air to keep in the heat, the desert rapidly begins to cool. He wraps himself up in as much fabric as he can scavenge and lays himself down in the middle of Lor San Tekka’s ruined hut. Looking up at the night sky above him through the roof the First Order destroyed at his direction, not so long ago, Ben thinks of Rey, looking up at this same sky for so many years. He thinks of the old man, an ally and a friend to his whole family, and his veneration of the power he couldn’t wield.

Ben looks around. Sand, stone, straw. There must be water somewhere.

Tomorrow, he’ll get to work.

*

The rebuilding of Tuanul takes him weeks.

He’s never built anything before. Ben’s expertise is in tearing things down (which he does, once by mistake and then again out of frustration, when he can’t get the first roof he attempts to hold). His other proficiency, battle, serves him just as poorly: there’s no one to fight out here but himself, which only causes him to grow more and more stressed with no one to take it out on (in these moments Ben almost finds himself mourning Hux; truly, it’s such a pity that he’s dead). Screaming like a madman into the wasteland only does so much to alleviate his roiling emotions. He wants something he can tear to ribbons without having to patch it back together.

“Patience,” he growls to himself through gritted teeth, as the earth he’s trying to sculpt dries faster than he can work it and falls apart in his hands. He refuses to let himself destroy his own handiwork again. “Patience…” he repeats with a snarl to his trembling hands, which shake from his barely-suppressed rage.

Despite these troubles, there are times when the work is almost tolerable. On rare occasions, the work even approaches enjoyable. Ben generally rests at the hottest part of the day, working primarily at dawn and dusk, so the view when he’s rebuilding is often inspiring. There is a satisfaction, too, in seeing the work through; the first hut he completes, crude as it is, moves him despite its sloppy appearance. At other times, the work is nigh impossible and endlessly stressful, but the one thing it never seems to be is easy, and the difficulty of it takes a toll on Ben’s fragile psyche.

One day, when he is tired and fuming, his long unruly hair plasters itself to his face and neck and refuses to cooperate with his many attempts to braid it back. Ben grips as much of it as he can in his fist, picks up a knife and cuts it, without a moment’s thought, in one fierce swipe that nicks the heel of his hand. He regrets it instantly –will he ever manage to live a life without regrets? – and yet looking at the tangle of hair in his hand, he feels...relief?

Not relief, but freedom, Ben realizes, watching the strands of dark hair as they’re carried on the wind. The feeling soars within him and brings him patience and peace enough to push through the rest of the day…at least, until he finally sees himself again.

When he catches his reflection in a shard of glass, Ben winces involuntarily. He hadn’t made an even cut, and so the length of his dirty hair varies wildly depending on how he looks at it. What’s more, his ears, which he’s always hated, are very nearly exposed – something he hadn’t considered in his haste and exasperation. Between his scraggly ends, dirt-covered brow, and ragged clothes, Ben thinks this may be the worst he’s ever looked. He hates how much he cares.

_Redemption isn’t a pretty thing_ , his namesake calls in the Force. _All the same, the left side could do with some cleaning up_.

It could be the wind, but Ben knows it’s a hand that ruffles his hair for emphasis.

“I don’t recall insufferability being part of the Jedi code,” Ben grumbles, taking up the knife once more, and Old Ben laughs, and laughs, and laughs.

*

“You cut your hair.”

The little holo of Rey grins impishly in his hands. They certainly don’t need these mundane calls, but Ben likes them. They make him think of his father’s transmissions home on long space voyages, remind him that it won’t be like this forever, in ways that their connection in the force somehow can’t.

“With the dullest knife in this system, I think,” Ben replies, turning pink in spite of his mighty efforts not to. “This desert heat is murder.”

She considers the change, a little too long for Ben’s liking. “Hopefully it’s not so awful,” he adds, his hand reflexively taming his choppy strands.

“You’ve left me enough to play with,” she decides, and the touch of wickedness in her tone sets his whole body on fire.

“Oh” is all that Ben can manage to squeak out in the face of such an admission. Rey’s laugh turns to a bit of a cackle, which she stifles.

“No, don’t do that,” he says, “I like it.”

Rey snickers. “Finn likes it too.”

It takes him a moment to remember who she’s talking about. He’s jealous of Finn’s ability – no, his wisdom – to shed his names, his lives and start anew in the light so cleanly. All Ben’s dead pasts seem to linger, demanding answers… _but you chose them_ , he reminds himself, and the bitter jealousy curdles into self-hatred. Ben stamps it down for Rey’s sake, putting on a devilish grin. “Does he now?”

“He does. Poe, on the other hand…” She rolls her eyes, but there’s a play behind them that Ben just barely knows well enough not to read into. “Poe is insufferable, Poe teases…”

“The nerve of him,” he quips, as if he hadn’t just learned his childhood rival has been spending his days teasing his soulmate, while Ben languishes alone on a forgotten rock. “Put him on. I’ll set him straight.”

Rey’s face falls, landing in a sullen, mournful place. Too far. He should have known better.

“Just a joke,” Ben promises, “I wouldn’t hurt—”

Rey shakes her head. “He thinks you’re dead, Ben,” Rey explains. “They all do.”

He’s completely unprepared for the sharp pang of hurt that hits him at these words. “You...told them so?”

“No,” she replies, taking offense. “Finn and Jannah watched me...” Rey’s breath hitches, and Ben can almost feel the burn of his saber below his ribs, can hear the crackling of the blade and the roar of the sea.

_I forgive you._

_I deserved it._

Perhaps he should say these things – she looks so haunted by her guilt – or perhaps he should change the subject entirely. He ends up doing neither; instead, he bitterly asks, “You haven’t found it in your heart to correct them?”

“I can’t,” she replies.

“Why not?”

She says nothing. Ben doesn’t know what he expected her to say. “Perhaps if I can manage to truly butcher my hair, I’ll be unrecognizable enough to live by your side anyway,” he jokes, trying to lighten the mood.

But Rey’s solemnity is stubborn. “I don’t think anyone but me is ready to know, Ben.”

He nods slowly, his jaw moving around the words he wants to say, but can’t. There’s nothing for it. He is unworthy, and she is right.

“I told you to come back for me,” Rey says, as if reading his mind. “I meant it.”

“I will,” he swears, on everything he ruined and everything he’ll remedy. “I’ll come back for you, sweetheart.”

The endearment escapes him without so much as a warning, but she melts – and it’s _miraculous_ , to accidentally do something right for once. Then the well-known roar of his narrowing world sounds in his ears, and Rey blinks into existence before him, holding a tiny holo of Ben as he sits now.

He groans. So does the little holo.

“Wouldn’t it be something to be able to control it,” say he and his miniature doppelgänger. Rey and her own double laugh.

*

He doesn’t remember to ask Rey for supplies, because the furthest number of hours ahead that he can think can be counted on one hand. Ben had found a small stockpile of portions when he’d arrived, but he’ll soon run out, and he has no choice but to go off in search of food.

No, he hadn’t remembered to ask for her help, yet somehow his first opportunity for shelter comes in the form of a downed AT-AT, filled to the brim with her spirit and memories. Rey is all over this place: her hopes, her dreams, and her resources…tucked away, deep within her refuge, she’d stockpiled portions and water.

Bless her, the unparalleled empress of his heart, a genius, a goddess…

“Ow!” he cries as a jolt of electricity shoots through him. She’d booby-trapped the whole place long ago; apparently, some of them are still active.

Damn the clever little scavenger.

Once he’s deactivated the trap and partaken of her stores, he takes a proper look around. Most everything appears to have been scavenged without Rey keeping guard, but there are pieces of her still scattered about: a long tan cloth, to protect her neck and face (this he takes); the hammock where she used to curl up and hold fast to the fading memories of her parents; a toolbox squirreled away, full of rusted implements that she’d nevertheless managed to put to good use in maintaining her traps, protecting her makeshift home.

He contemplates the long wall of etchings where Rey once counted the days until her family’s return, a vigil that ended forever not when Ben had arrived on Jakku, but when Finn came to take her home. Every day since he’d met her, Ben has marveled at the thought – they’d been on the same planet, with barely anything but sand and hardly any distance between them, and still he hadn’t felt his other half. Jealous as he is, Ben knows deep in his heart that Finn was the first link between them, and for that, he has no choice but to be forever grateful.

His eyes are drawn to something that does not fit. A tiny doll made of fabric scraps and string. It could have been hers once, he supposes, but it doesn’t seem to know her.

Ben takes it in his hand –

“HEY!” screams a young girl, beating at his legs with her tiny fists. “That’s _OURS_!”

Startled, Ben drops the doll and turns sharply to find himself face-to-face with a sad-eyed woman he guesses to be close to Rey’s age. It’s hard to tell considering the way that struggle seems to have aged her, in much the same way that the dark had aged him. Looking sternly up at him is the source of his pain, a ferocious little girl who can be no older than five; she picks up the doll and clutches it protectively, ready at any moment to attack him again.

“I’m sorry,” he stammers, “I was, uh, looking for…”

“ _Stealing_?” the girl shouts, before her mother has time to shush her.

“I needed shelter from the heat,” Ben explains. “I was only planning on staying until the sun went down, I didn’t know anyone still…” He catches himself. “I thought this place was abandoned.”

“Well, it’s not,” the girl replies indignantly, but she seems to have calmed somewhat.

The woman, on the other hand, appears to be growing more suspicious. “Where are you coming from? I’ve never seen you before.”

“Tuanul,” he says.

This startles the fear out of the woman. “Tuanul?! It’s a ruin. It’s been dead over a year.”

“Ma says the _X’us’R’iia_ took it,” the girl agrees. Ben doesn’t know what she means, but he can tell from the hurt in the older woman’s eyes that whatever the _X’us’R’iia_ is had likely been easier to explain to a child than a massacre.

A massacre he’d caused, that is remembered not only by the land on which he’d committed his crimes, but by the people who’d survived it...he’s kidding himself, trying to build it anew, he’ll never be free of this guilt...

“It’s gone now,” the girl adds unnecessarily, and the words bring him out of the spiral of despair that he so often finds himself in. It must show in his face; Ben doesn’t miss how the woman discretely nudges her daughter to get behind her, nor does he miss the way her flinty eyes glance toward the exit.

“That’s not so anymore,” Ben assures them both. “The village is like new.”

“Who rebuilt it?” the woman asks, furrowing her brow.

Her expression demands an answer. It is a relief not to have to give one.

Ben shrugs. “I don’t know.”

*

As soon as he can, Ben takes his leave. He offers to lead them back with him to Tuanul, but the AT-AT is known, and the woman cannot shake her suspicion. He doesn’t blame her. Jakku is a dangerous, wild place, full of untrustworthy interlopers looking to take advantage.

_No matter how strong the desert has made you, it is no place to be alone_ , someone whispers on the wind.

When he returns to the village, that someone is waiting for him. A man in the Force with wild hair, kind eyes, and a mischievous smile stands on the outskirts of town, looking upon what Ben has built in admiration. Looking at him is like looking into a mirror. Ben has never seen the man before him, but it would be impossible for him not to know who he is.

“Grandfather,” he whispers reverently.

_It is harder than most can ever know to face their misdeeds_ , Anakin replies, brimming with pride. _You’ve done so well_.

There is a definitive snap in his chest, like a dam being broken…in an instant, his heart full of joy surges with boiling-hot fury. For reasons Ben cannot fathom, the sincerity of Anakin’s praise reawakens the anger he had locked away, and despite his best efforts to hold it back, Ben cannot help but cry –

“Where _were_ you?”

Anakin doesn’t look at all surprised by the outburst. Instead, his features become laced with pity, which only makes Ben angrier, makes his throat seize up and his blood race.

“I called, and I _pleaded_ …”

Ben’s voice breaks as he begins weeping in earnest. Misery darkens Anakin’s face as he approaches his broken grandson. “I needed you,” Ben sobs.

_I tried, Ben_ , Anakin whispers. _You couldn’t hear_.

“That can’t be true,” Ben snaps back. He can feel himself losing control but he can’t stop it. “You _abandoned_ me. You are strong in the Force, you could have broken through–”

_Only as strong as you_ , Anakin reminds him. _And you were stubborn, just as I was. So deeply entrenched in the dark, so swayed by Palpatine that all I could do was pull, and hope._

Ben stops breathing.

Of course.

Of _course_ it had been his own fault. That insistent tug on his heart, begging him to come back to the light…he hadn’t even entertained the notion that it could have been his grandfather.

Stars, if only there were someone left to _blame_ …

Ben can’t reply, ashamed as he is. Wave after wave of anguish crashes over him, bringing him to his knees. Each new sob threatens to choke him to death. “I’m sorry,” he moans, bowing his head. “I’m sorry, Grandfather, I –”

Anakin kneels before him and lifts Ben’s head. _The fault is mine_ , says Anakin, wiping away his tears. _It all could have been so different_. He studies Ben’s face carefully, finding something in it that seems to break his own heart. _She would have loved you so much_.

“I’ll make you proud, Grandfather,” Ben insists. “I’ll make you all proud. I promise.”

_You don’t do this for us_ , says his grandfather.

“Rey,” murmurs Ben sagely, because there can be no other path forward. She is the reason for everything, the fated end of his grim, agonizing journey.

_No, Ben_ , Anakin says, with a bit of the ferocity Ben inherited. _For you_.

*

It’s a slow process, but Tuanul comes back to life. Every few days, Ben awakens to find another scavenger taking shelter in one of the huts, or another family sitting around the fire at the heart of the village. Traders begin passing through with their wares on worn-down old speeders. No one asks questions of him, minding their own business except to give him a nod of acknowledgement and thanks, perhaps even a hello if they’re in high spirits. He welcomes them all, heartened by the quiet, burgeoning liveliness of the town.

At the height of his pride in himself, as the once-dead village bustles with life, just when his atonement begins to feel real…Ben receives a comm from Rey.

_Yavin 4_ , her message reads, _when you are ready_.

Moments later, a post-script: _They know. You’ll be safe_.

Packing his things, he hatches the beginnings of a plan. He’ll head to the outpost, get himself a ship. He’ll travel to the systems the First Order had most thoroughly ravaged, and he will do everything he can to earn the love Rey gives so freely. And when he feels he has paid enough of a price, he’ll come home to his beloved at last.

It won’t be so long. There is peace, and balance. They have nothing but time.

“Hey, mister!”

Ben turns. A tiny, ferocious girl, no older than five, with her hands on her hips. A stony-faced woman standing behind her, mouth agape as she takes in the village.

“I remember you,” says the girl, cocking her head to one side. “Where’re you going?”

“Far,” he replies.

“Will you be back? ‘S gonna get dark soon.”

He shakes his head. “I don’t think so.”

“Hmm,” the girl retorts thoughtfully. “That’s too bad.”

It is, he thinks as he watches her investigate the village, peeking into his hut and asking her doll for her opinion on the town as a whole. He’d found a kind of peace here that he’ll be sorry to leave. But what awaits him – the trials, the penance, the hope, the love – these he cannot dream of losing.

“You never gave us your name,” says the woman, as her girl pops her head back out from within his hut. “You can’t possibly leave without at least giving your name.”

“I’m Ben,” he replies.

The woman is satisfied, but her daughter is not convinced. “Ben what?”

As the little girl narrows her eyes at him, the whole world seems to shift. Just over the girl’s shoulder, the woman he'd tried to die to save materializes out of thin air, utterly radiant in the Force. Rey catches him staring and stops her conversation with someone unseen, holding his gaze with a soft smile. Her unspoken question hangs between them: _are you coming for me?_

_Yes,_ he calls back. _Be patient. I am coming for you._

The family name is in good hands. As for his own, his father’s...

He’ll earn it back in time.

He smiles down at the girl. “Just Ben.”

**Author's Note:**

> Ben Solo's real final act was to revive me from the actual fandom dead I CAN'T


End file.
